PROHIBITION FROM THE BIBLE STANDPOINT.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XV, Issue 4073, 27 October 1911, Page 2

PROHIBITION FROM THE BIBLE STANDPOINT.

Rev. P. W. Fairclough, F.R.A.S.

The friends of the open bar are throwing the Bible at us again. This argument, like the others, has been answered over and over again. But lolly lives long. Bray a fool in a mortar, yet will not his folly depart with him. There is a type of mind that cannot be confuted, and there is a kind of argument that cannot be killed. “Time was,” said Macbeth to the ghost, “when that the brains were out, the man would die.” A man has that peculiarity still, but some worms and other lowly creatures can be cut in two with advantage. Let us cut this old argument int mincemeat, and see how that will serve.

It is well known that the Bible is the refuge of all falling classes. When fanatics began to say the world was round, they brought the Bible hammer and knocked it as flat as a postage stamp. When other fanatics said the world moved, they spiked and bolted it fast to the Bible. When other fanatics said slavery was a sin, they sanctioned it with the Bible. When still (others said women had rights, they condemned her to silence and obedience with the Bible. Does not all this show that the Bible was never intended to stereotype the world, and so immortalise the institutions and opinions that existed when it was written ? I put it to ecclesiastics. Do you allow the Bible to stereotype even the Church ? Do you not contend that the Church, like society, is a living organisation which must develop and adjust itself? Do you not justify ecclesiastical titles, ceremonies, vestments and the like on j that principle. Surely you do not mean to say that- social customs and political movements are more bound and limited by the Bible than the Church itself? I put it again to the publican, or other advocate of the open bar, who reminds me that they drank wine in Palestine. In the first place, how much “wine” do you sell? In the second place, where do you find open bars in the Bible? Where do you find that the community ought to sell a monopoly in liquor for an annual license fee? You want to bind me to the letter; how does the letter suit you? Now. I no more pretend that the Bible advocates No-License than I pretend that it advocates the Factories Act, or weekly half-holidays. These are modern remedies for modern evils. The Bible contains the principles of fair play between master and man, and all wise industrial legislation is based on these principles. In Palestine they knew neither the evils nor the remedies. So the Bible abounds in strong condemnations of liquor; in examples of special honour being given to abstainers, and of men, chosen for high service, being specially prohibited. It must be remembered that liquor, as we know it, is a modern evil. Ardent j spirits were unknown till the eleventh century. The Bible knows only fermented liquors, and as good an authority as Dean Farrar has said ! that Jesus may never have seen a. drunken man. Yet, though the Bible knows only a mild and much-water-ed form of alcohol, it speaks of it with the vehemence of the fanatic. Let ns look at the vow of a Nazarite, ar.d see how much liquor was supposed to elevate a man before God. “When either a man, or a woman, shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, nor vingar of strong drink; neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried.” Numbers vi. 2-3. This was prohibition with a vengea nee! What washed-out milksops the Nazarites must have been. Wait a. little, though. Read Judges xiff., and you will find a man called Samson, “a Nazarite to the day of his" death ” You will also find that his mother before him was prohibited, lest the hero should be tainted. In Jeremiah xxxv. you may read of the Rechabites, who refused “the l good creature of God,” wine. 'God was so pleased with them that he promised that their line should he continued for ever. Do you think he has altered His mind, and is now hacking the publican and the brew-

er? In Daniel yon may read of a vontli who refused to “defile himself” even with wine from the King’s.table, and that was how he became Prime Minister. Rut the Bible is against that sort of thing now, is it? In the New Testament when a bold man was wanted, who would heard Kings in their sin, he was prohibited.—Advt.